Interview

Finally!  Had an interview that did not go over like a meeting between a discombobulated moose and Katie Couric.  

I even had three different things in my hair, it looked like I had constructed scaffolding underneath.  Shiny bouncy scaffolding.

I didn't even have a zit.  

I dazzled.  I smiled. I sat up straight and made the nice HR lady laugh. 

And then,at the end of the interview, during which another editor was fired somewhere in Manhattan, I was offered the esteemed poistion of unpaid intern. 

Soon I will wake up and see I never graduated college.

Lean Margins

Last Wednesday I went to a Halloween Party where someone was dressed as the Ghost of Print. Which is currently funny the way suicide charades are always hilarious. Even though it is irritating to be stuck in limbo at my current position as a permalance, never promoted, intern, but at least I can laugh at it.

But then I look at my favorite job listing sites and realize I am going to be stuck in the mud for a while. The available jobs are dwindling everyday and are dwindling a lot. Then I there is the comforting knowledge I am up against the entire unemployed staff of Radar, Town and Country, Culture and Travel, Domino (?), Blueprint, and whatever percentage of the LA Times assistant staff that moved out to New York in search of jobs. Oh small liberal arts school, why did you not teach me the wonder of HTML and Quark?

I know most people are not terribly upset by wall streeters losing their second yachts and being reduced to one pair of polo shorts, but seriously it seems everyone has already stuck a fork and called the time of death for print. But if the government can give the well coiffed of Wall Street a ginormous bailout, why can't the print industry get some love? When we steer you wrong it is only to a bad $11 movie or shoes you can't walk in...We don't ruin the world.

So can someone just hire me already? On salary? So I don't feel like some cheap, by the hour, escort with excel knowledge.

Payday: still real

Does anyone else feel weird getting a paycheck during a global financial apocalypse?

Every time it comes in the mail I feel like I've found the last unicorn or something.

Gum

Sometimes I have a day where I end up convinced that I am stuck in the middle of an evil Rube Goldberg machine.


Well maybe it isn't evil as much as playful, but it always seems to be laughing at my expense.

New Bosses and the Teeny Cupcakes

It's been an entire season and one financial apocalypse since my last blog.  But forget everyone else, I have a new boss.  Which has made work dicey, since I also have my old boss.  One has an office the other is on the floor with me but has an -in-Chief in his title.  So now I don't know exactly who fits where, but I'm betting that the -in-Chief wins out.  Also I officially upgraded myself to freelance editorial assistant, which is kind of the same as saying I am no longer a garbage man but a Sanitation Contractor.  

The plus side of a new and scary boss, is new and scary assignments.  No longer do I troll the internet all day for dancing robots--NO!  I have been upgraded to acquirer of things.  So look out Random House I am coming for your press releases.

 In any case this totally beats putting up a hundred and one pie photos at Martha Stewart.  It has to be some kind of illegal punishment to make people look at pictures of dessert all day while stuck in an office where NO ONE EATS.   The one time we had a party, they brought in cupcakes that were maybe one cubic inch.  At least they had sprinkles.   

My Shoes are Loud

I am taking a break from interning to return to the evil world of temping. I intern for a website and temp at a very posh magazine. This basically means instead of spending an hour looking up videos of creepy robots, I spend an hour finding thirty variations of shirt buttons. (Found a suggestion on how to correctly pick up the buttons you have dropped with your fat unpolished fingers.)

For the first ten minutes of the day my mind went something like this:

ELEVATOR: Wow, the doors in here are reflective--my those Kors girls are skinny...is this top cute? OMG are sleeves out? ARE SLEEVES OUT?!

INTRODUCTIONS: Hi! Hi! HI! OHMYGOD Nice to see you AGIAN! Yeah I've totally been busy and awesome since I was here!

ACTUALLY THINKING: My shoes are making noise--my shoes are making noise--why are my flats making noise! Who are these people again? Apparently BCBG secretly makes fucking tap shoes.

Fifteen minutes into the work day I was reintroduced to a girl as she was WEIGHING herself in her office. But she didn't use just any scale--such as one that measures people in lbs. No she was using a clear glass Body Mass Index calculator.

Worst magic box ever.

During lunch I saw one girl secretly and self-loathingly eat a bag of M&M's and my officemate had cereal. I ate a sandwich and spent the entire afternoon freaking out I ate BOTH halves. Both. Halves.

By the end of the day I felt like a fatty tap dancer who is no good and misses her internship.

A Horse Head for Christmas

One of the worst things about internships is that you have to be overly excited about everything.

• I would be so honored to run last week's data!

• Are you kidding? Checking time code is absolutely my favorite thing to do.

• I think this is a totally great experience and I am learning like amazing life lessons every morning--and yes I already bought forty 2 cent postage stamps.

Basically imagine every day is Christmas and you keep getting a package of Hanes accessorized with a roll of pennies from Grandmama.

I was thinking about this when I went to the Scope Art Fair and saw a ginormous Horse Head on the ground with a skinny arm poking out from under the mane. The arm then proceeded to slowly brush the mane--the girl, to whom I'm assuming the arm was attached, must have been crammed into a space with the volume of your average paper box.

I imagined her day might have gone something like this:

Artist: Hey do you mind being working at that art fair?

Intern: Oh my God! I would totally love to--it's totally a dream of mine.

Artist: Great! (Pulls out scary head from behind immaculate white desk) So here's the horse head.

Intern (still smiling): Oh, so this is the...Great! Uh yeah this is definitely a dream of mine.

Artist: Oh fabulous! Now your best bet is to keep your knees under you. I love you in this--are you ok in there?

Intern: Oh yeah there is plenty of leg room.

Artist: You don't mind do you?

Intern (crying silently): Oh NO! I mean this is a Kansasian's dream come true. I totally feel like Charlotte in Sex and City. Yeah love it.

Errands

I should hate running errands at work. It's demeaning gopher work not worth the subway fare or brain power of someone who graduated ON TIME with TWO majors. (Yep I'm awesome...it's not like those majors were related or anything)

But I love errands. I swear when I walk outside everything turns into technicolor. Which makes me think that American offices might cause blindness.

But the best part about running errands is I kind of do whatever I want. If my boss doesn't look appropriately apologetic about turning me into a postwoman (postlady?), I just go online shopping at the Apple store or hang out at the "Women's Interest" section at Border's or buy a nutella crepe. The best thing to do is wander into a Sephora and puting on all the make-up I couldn't be bothered with at 8am.

Although I don't recommend trying one of those weird lip "plumpers." I tried one once and couldn't talk without prying my mouth apart all afternoon. Gross. Also it kind of ruined my cover that the F train stopped for like ever because I think they totally found a rat king--for reals.

Undead Gummi bears and NPR Music

Currently my internship does not require me to stay all day. I do my data entry/research and then go. Which would be wonderful except that I get paid hourly. A banner day is a 10 to 4 block of electronic filing on the company database. woooo.

A full paragraph about work would be unnecessary and about as exciting as the phrase "electronic filing on the company database."

Instead I give you my day in with bullet points. Bullets--excitement!

• 10-10:15 Banter with boss about family vacation. Stay until there is a pause and he is forced to awkwardly send me out of the office so I can actually do the work I'm supposed to.
  
• 10:15-10:30 Untangle headphones from bottom of purse.
• 10:30-11:30 Gawker.com
• 11:30-11:31 Open company database page.
  
• 11:32-12:32 Make a play list on NPR.org/music and feel superior to the co-workers who get paid salary and have a dental plan.
• 12:32-12:55 Run out to over priced cafe and get the cheapest smallest plain coffee. See some scattered gummi bears on the sidewalk that are so dirty even the pigeons don't want them.
• 12:55-1:00 Get irrationally angry that the pigeons were so uppity about something as awesome as gummi bears, even though they did kind of look like undead bears.
• 1:00-2:00 Stare at database while listening to new playlist and pondering how zombie gummi bears would act and what would happen if they were eaten.
• 2:00-2:30 Enter data and send it to boss.
  
• 2:30-3:00 Decide to grow hair out so it looks like Kate Nash's, but vow never to wear anything that is a weird boob seperator.

Why the Hold Button is like Calculus

You know how everyone born post 1980 knows so much about electronics that we can all hot wire an ATM into an IPod touch?

True.

However, I have no clue how to work the average office phone. Yeah I understand what the hold button does and what happens when you press it. But do I press it again take someone off of hold or press Line 2 then the hold button? Last time I had to finagle with a phone I was an intern at TV Land where I spent most of my time chewing my hair while on facebook. At the end of the first month, I had used the phone a total of four times to confirm meetings. I was so nervous I would write out my all three sentences for each call beforehand. If some half broken glass pane was animated and kind of girly that would be what I sounded like. Also everything end up as a question even "Hello this is Jill?"

Then one day the assistant to the president of TV Land tells me she has a dentist appointment. She sat me behind her beast of a desk and it was like being in a colorful faux cockpit of plane.

This is what I can recollect of the phone directions:

"If phone rings twice but the black arrow is blinking someone is still calling. If it rings once and it isn't blinking Larry's got it and don't pick it up or you will interrupt their phone call. Sometimes it will ring continuously--pick that up right away. If it rings at 17.5 second intervals it means the phone is about to self destruct so back away slowly. There are two lines so if you're talking to someone already and someone calls then the phone will ring only once then start blinking. WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T HANG UP ON (Insert absurdly important person here but not quite Sumner Redstone)--it doesn't matter unless you hang up on Mr. X."

Two hours of girly glass breaking voice later I manage to do everything right except that I hung up on Mr. X. Or actually I never answered, I thought the president had answered and unsure of what to do. I remember sitting there watching the little arrow for about thirty seconds then thinking SHIT.

The assistant came back with one of those serial killer smiles and I hid her letter opener.

"We have a problem--you hung up on Mr. X. Now if you were on a call and the other line was blinking it is ok--because how could you know he was calling. But otherwise..."

"Yeah he was on with someone already and then some girl and wanted to me to confirm the bagel order for the two o'clock meeting?"

So now the hold button scares me--if I can write boobs on a Graphing calculator it shouldn't be this hard to answer a phone.